New A-Wing in Star Wars Episode VIII?!?!

Guys…check it out. Promotional pictures from Star Wars EP VIII reveal a new design of the A-Wing Starfighter!

Now, my understanding of the RZ-1 A-Wing is all off now…it used to be established that the A-Wing was built in the post-Battle of Yavin era, but now that Disney is at the helm, A-Wings have shown up in the alliance fleet as a predecessor to X-Wings. Who knows if RZ-1 is even correct anymore….

Anyway here’s a nice pic of the ship as it appears in Return of the Jedi:

from starwars.wikia.com

And now here’s the new one with Star Wars cast members and some…miscellaneous prince? I dunno.

The bumps in front of the canopy are new. Also, check out the cannons behind Chewbacca.Two actors who look like Finn and Rey. Btw, if you watch the movie without knowing Rey’s name beforehand (like I did), when she introduces herself it sounds like her name is “Ahm-rhey”Take note of the canopy…now you get some nice shade against that supernova!

Pics are from Twitter feed of Movie Web. You can see differences in the canopy, fuselage, and even the cannons! Overall, it does seem much slimmer than the standard A-Wing. While I’m biased towards the Original Trilogy, I want to see a full-frontal shot before reserving judgement. Hopefully, we get to see the bad boy in action, though I hope it’s not piloted by British Royalty (yes, I’m not totally clueless).

Anyway…just a quick update. Hopefully this translates into something hot for X-Wing Miniatures. Maybe an A-Wing with native barrel roll? An extra shield or agility point? A-Wing with a S-Loop? Who knows.

Random A-Wing Facts!!!!

-Out of the 4 main fighters (X-Wing, Y-Wing, B-Wing, A-Wing) it is the only one to carry missiles instead of torpedoes.

-In The Empire Strikes Back, there was a scene where “Hobbie” Klivian (Luke mentions his name…”Hobbie, you still with me? Hobbie, I’ve been hit!) sacrifices himself and crashes into the cockpit of General Veers’ AT-AT. It was ultimately cut, but spiritually brought back in RotJ when Arvel Crynyd crashes his A-Wing into the command deck of the Super Star Destroyer.

-There were several pilots who recorded “cockpit chatter” lines for RotJ. One of them, known as Sila Kott, is a female with a British accent.

Wedge: “Red Three, Red Two, pull in!” Sila Kott: “Got it!”

Though, you might not remember her because she was dubbed over by a male actor. Seems strange to me, but then again, if you watch the deleted scenes of the 2011 Blu-Ray set, her deliveries were a little off. Speaking of bad line delivery…

-This happened…Probably the oldest Rebel pilot of the bunch. You can see her in the Blu-Ray deleted scenes, though she seems like she’d be a better fit on the Beverly Hillbillies than in a Star Wars movie. Exactly as you might expect, she has a shrill and squeaky voice and often couldn’t hear the lines being fed to her. If you get your hands on the Blu-Ray set, check it out. It’s pretty great =).